AN ALLIED RESPONSIBILITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 161, 10 July 1945, Page 4

AN ALLIED RESPONSIBILITY

to do with the German General Staff is one of the most difficult problems facing,the British and American authorities. The Allies are pledged to break up the Corps so completely that it will have no chance of reforming for generations, if ever. This will prove no easy task, for the General Staff has survived victory and defeat for more than a century, always learning from the last war and planning for the next. Frederick the Great founded the Corps and gave it its Prussian base. The first great lesson was administered by Napoleon at Jena, and down the years of the nineteenth century the Corps was steadily developing. When defeat again Germany in 1918 the G.S.C. found itself miraculously preserved, for the victorious Allies permitted Germany to retain a force of 100,000 to guard the country against internal disorder. The General Staff needed no more encouragement. Old ideas and.new were examined, then tested out in realistic manoeuvres. The modern concept of truly "general" staff appeared, representative of the three Services, army, navy and air force, with officers who had graduated from exhaustive tactical courses in'each branch. It was this flexibility of command that made easy the first brilliant successes of the blitzkrieg armies. The General Staff is the driving force of German militarism. Remove it and the country loses a whole section of its people whose god really is war.

The latest suggested fate of the Corps is exile, and it has much to commend it. As is pointed out in the cable published to-day, very few Staff Corps officers could be classed as war criminals in the international sense. They carried out their orders as soldiers must in any army, and provided that they took no part in proved atrocities they cannot be held as "criminals." Few of the General Staff saw service in the notorious S.S., and it has often' been stated that there was open hostility between the staffs of the regular army and Hitler's special troops. The disposal of S.S. senior officers presents another type of problem. There is no doubt that the General Staff must be dispersed into groups as small as convenient, but it is difficult to see why British colonies only should be suggested as future.homes for these professional killers. As in other responsibilities of victory, there should be an Allied sharing of the burden of supervision. of these exiled Prussian die-hards. It is certain thej' would be loath to accept disbandment, and would devote their principal energies to planning escape with a view to ultimately making their way back to the Fatherland. As a first step successful officers would probably seek asylum in some country where political currents run fast and deep, and past experience suggests that no amount of diplomatic exchanges "would produce the fugitives.

Bound up with the smashing of the General Staff is the whole question of war criminals. Prior to Victory in Europe we were repeatedly told that full plans had been made for the speedy trial and disposal of those responsible for international crimes. It now appears that the actual position is far from settled. The British War Office has belatedly issued instructions governing the trials of the lesser criminals, and it is to be hoped that the officers responsible get on with the job with all speed. The procedure for trial of the major cases, such as Goering, Ribbentrop and Hess, is still unsettled, and the longer proceedings are delayed the more likely is a reduction in the penalties inflicted. A realistic outlook on the whole question is urgently needed. "The Allied world demands that the arch criminals be suitably dealt with by the proposed International Court, that the lesser be swiftly tried and punished, and that the fate of the potentially dangerous General Staff be satisfactorily decided. Failure to agree on the part of the Powers at this stage can only react to the advantage of the men who have caused five years of bloodshed and -suffering.